Berkley Center

The video “The Innocence of Muslims” shook the world in late September, provoking protests and violence in the Middle East and South Asia. In France, these demonstrations were exacerbated by the publication of a satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, which featured caricatures and pornographic pictures of the Prophet Mohammad. Although France has had a long history of protecting freedom of the press, the government asked the publication to reconsider its decision to publish for reasons of public safety.

In my law class on “Judges and Liberties,” we discussed this fine line between freedom of expression and an incitement to public disorder and violence. Like most of my classmates, I sided on the behalf of Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish the photos. The way to counter these caricatures should be peaceful protest against the drawings and the ideas they represent, not a government decision as to what constitutes hate speech.

As such, the French government’s decision to block Muslim street protests in response to the video troubled me. The French government requires demonstrators to get a permit before engaging in protests and can deny these permits for any number of reasons. To me, this decision seemed to contradict France’s constitutional protection of the freedom of assembly and a way of picking sides in the debate. Charlie Hebdo represents an avowedly secular and atheist point of view—why deny the Muslim leaders and groups a way to express their perspective on the situation?

The government rightly fears for public safety, but giving the protest a public permit would allow the police to better manage the situation and reduce the chance of violence. It would also demonstrate that the government, which has been criticized for poorly integrating its immigrant population into the mainstream, is giving equal time and voice to its Muslim community.

In response to the publication, the French Council of Muslim Faith decided to press charges against Charlie Hebdo for “deliberate intention to offend” in Alsace-Moselle. Interestingly enough, the Alsace-Moselle region, right on the border of Germany, follows a mix of French and historical German laws that were enacted when it was part of the German Empire.

In a country known for strict separation of church and state, this provision is noticeably absent here, and its penal code includes a punishment of three years in prison for someone who “publicly blasphemes God” or an established religious community. My law professor, however, said that these lawsuits were unlikely to succeed because they must be filed by a local organization in Alsace-Moselle, and no organization considered doing so.

That such local law exists in a highly centralized country should come as no surprise to me—France is full of these contradictions. It has fewer unionized workers and loses fewer working days from strikes than we do in the United States, and yet we consider the French to be the king of strikes. My French classmates explained to me that French protests and strikes are usually highly choreographed affairs between the demonstrators and the police. In light of this observation, it is easier to see why the government would move to block an organic protest that doesn’t follow the usual script, but that doesn’t make its decision any more justifiable.